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Ozge...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 1, 2014 at 5:20am
Ozgenur “Ozge” Kahvecioglu Feridun first came to Argonne in 2010, when she was as a Visiting Scientist working on a scale-up project, the Ultrafast and Large Scale Boriding project.

A visiting scientist at Argonne in 2010 and a postdoctoral research fellow since 2012, Ozgenur “Ozge” Kahvecioglu Feridun is a metallurgical and materials engineer with the Process Technology Research group in the Energy Systems division.



What do you do at Argonne?



I work on process development and scale-up of advanced cathode materials. We scale processes from bench to pilot scale, identifying and resolving process challenges when producing materials. This reduces the risks associated with the commercialization of new materials.



What made you choose Argonne as the place to continue your postdoc work?



Actually, this is my second time working at Argonne. In 2010, I was here as a Visiting Scientist working on another scale-up project, the Ultrafast and Large Scale Boriding project, under Ali Erdemir. During this project, I learned firsthand how to apply my skills to solve process scale-up problems and how working on a diverse team contributed to the overall success of the project. Everyone brought a different expertise to the table that helped us solve many difficult issues.



On that project, we scaled an advanced heat-treating process from bench to industrial scale. It was subsequently licensed to an industrial partner and won an R&D 100 award in 2012.



 Argonne National Labs: Ozgenur Kahvecioglu Feridun, by John Spizzurri

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WIMP Signals...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 2, 2014 at 5:57am
Maps of gamma rays from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, before (left) and after signals from known sources were removed, reveal an excess that is consistent with the distribution of dark matter.

Not long after the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope took to the sky in 2008, astrophysicists noticed that it was picking up a steady rain of gamma rays pouring outward from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This high-energy radiation was consistent with the detritus of annihilating dark matter, the unidentified particles that constitute 84 percent of the matter in the universe and that fizzle upon contact with each other, spewing other particles as they go. If the gamma rays did in fact come from dark matter, they would reveal its identity, resolving one of the biggest mysteries in physics. But some argued that the gamma rays could have originated from another source.



Now a new analysis of the signal claims to rule out all other plausible explanations and makes the case that the gamma rays trace back to a type of particle that has long been considered the leading dark matter candidate — a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. Meanwhile, a more tentative X-ray signal reported in two other new studies suggests the existence of yet another kind of dark matter particle called a sterile neutrino.



In the new gamma-ray analysis, which appeared Feb. 27 on the scientific preprint site arXiv.org, Dan Hooper and his collaborators used more than five years’ worth of the cleanest Fermi data to generate a high-resolution map of the gamma-ray excess extending from the center of the galaxy outward at least 10 angular degrees, or 5,000 light-years, in all directions.



“The results are extremely interesting,” said Kevork Abazajian, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. “The most remarkable part of the analysis is that the signal follows the shape of the dark matter profile out to 10 degrees,” he said, explaining that it would be “very difficult to impossible” for other sources to mimic this predicted dark matter distribution over such a broad range.



The findings do not constitute a discovery of dark matter, the scientists said, but they prepare the way for an upcoming test described by many researchers as a “smoking gun”: If the gamma-ray excess comes from annihilating WIMPs, and not conventional astrophysical objects, then the signal will also be seen emanating from dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way — diffuse objects that are rich in dark matter but not in other high-energy photon sources such as pulsars, rotating neutron stars that have been floated as alternative explanations for the excess.



 Quanta Magazine: Case for Dark Matter Signal Strengthens

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WSS Character

Posted by Brandon Hill on April 2, 2014 at 12:43am

So, our layout editor wanted me to do something different with Neela, a secondary character for "Wild Space Saga."   But I thought she looked just fine as-is.  So I'll be posting all 3 of the best iterations for you all.  But I need your help.  Which color scheme do you think is the best?  Let me know down below! 

First up is the original as I had it.  

Next is the more earthy combo that my editor came up with.

And here's the third: 

So let me know which one you think is best!  Thanks for your input, folks!  And be sure to keep up with our webcomic at http://www.tapastic.com/series/wildspacesaga . 

-Brandon Hill

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Back of the Envelop...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 31, 2014 at 6:00am
Source: Link below

After following the BICEP2 announcement via Twitter, I had to board a transcontinental flight, so I had 5 uninterrupted hours to think about what it all meant. Without Internet access or references, and having not thought seriously about inflation for decades, I wanted to reconstruct a few scraps of knowledge needed to interpret the implications of r ~ 0.2.



I did what any physicist would have done … I derived the basic equations without worrying about niceties such as factors of 3 or 2π. None of what I derived was at all original — the theory has been known for 30 years — but I’ve decided to turn my in-flight notes into a blog post. Experts may cringe at the crude approximations and overlooked conceptual nuances, not to mention the missing references. But some mathematically literate readers who are curious about the implications of the BICEP2 findings may find these notes helpful. I should emphasize that I am not an expert on this stuff (anymore), and if there are serious errors I hope better informed readers will point them out.



By tradition, careless estimates like these are called “back-of-the-envelope” calculations. There have been times when I have made notes on the back of an envelope, or a napkin or place mat. But in this case I had the presence of mind to bring a notepad with me.


 Quantum Frontiers: Inflation on the back of an envelop
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FREE - AMULLETTE AFLAME ON KINDLE!!!

Posted by Rasheedah Prioleau on March 30, 2014 at 4:00am

Hey BSFS!!!! 

I just got Amullette Aflame back from the editor and wanted to give you all a chance to get it Free before the virtual launch May 1st.  

FREE Sunday March 30th - Tuesday April 1

http://www.amazon.com/Amullette-Aflame-Princess-Rasheedah-Prioleau-ebook/dp/B00D2XFHJG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396096635&sr=8-3&keywords=rasheedah+prioleau

 After three years in prison without trial, Amullette is given the opportunity for parole if she agrees to raise a stolen child named Mikaya as her own.  Another condition of parole is marriage to a high ranking soldier of the Universal.   As fate would have it, her selected spouse is her ex-fiancé, Admiral Semaj Kroan.

Adjusting to her new life is easier than she expected as she falls in love with Admiral Kroan and adores the little girl the Universal has asked her to raise.  However, as Amullette and Kroan begin to build a beautiful life together they must face making the ultimate sacrifice to get Mikaya back where she truly belongs.  

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Wild Space Saga

Posted by Brandon Hill on March 29, 2014 at 2:51pm

Hey there, BSFS!  

You know, it has come to my attention that I NEVER posted any updates to my comic here!

::le gasp!:: 

My friend and co-writer, Terence Pegasus and I have created a new Wild-West-in-space themed webcomic called WILD SPACE SAGA, a three-arc epic series in the far-flung future.  

The plot goes a little something like this: 

***

The Future.

Far From Earth.

Mankind has spread to the stars; Earth has been lost. Civilization has fallen and arisen.
Since the devastation of the Imperium Wars, the danger of internal conflict among the Alliance of free worlds has become a constant threat, while the Second Imperium, a cruel mockery of the fallen old civilization, licks its chops for more worlds to increase its growing war machine.
Faced with the superior technology of the Imperium, the Alliance knows that the only defense against the Imperial war machine is unity.

But that hope is bleak.
And an ancient evil is coming.

***

Sound epic?  It is! You like Gunslinging?  We got it!  Sexy catgirls (and boys)? Got that too!  Epic space battles and giant freaking robots?  We've got you hooked up! High stakes plot with the future of life as we know it on the line?  Oh, yeah!  

So the only question left is, is your body ready for awesome?

Of course it is!  

I should have been sharing this with you all for awhile now, but it completely slipped my mind for some reason (Don't judge me.  :-P  ).  But that means you're all in luck, as we have a good backlog of pages since this past August, when it began.  Our first story arc, "The Last Warship" is well underway, So come on down and check us out!  New Updates each week!  And we have big things in store!  

Wild Space Saga

Also, to double your pleasure, we have new concept art and updates posted on our official DeviantArt page.  I'll be sure to post some of our new works here as well, so follow my posts here on BSFS. But if you want to keep up with us a bit more closely, and especially if you have a DA account, devwatch us here:  

Wild Space Saga - Deviantart

If we've piqued your interest, thank you very much!  We hope you love the work we've done.  And all we ask is that you share the love if you love it!  We want our viewership to grow like the itchy spot on your foot that you told no one about.  So come on down for adventure, and stay for the free baklava.  And as we like to say, we hope you'll come along with us to follow the Northwest Passage!  

See you soon, space cowboys!  

-Brandon Hill

P.S. Here's another freebie for you to share the love with!  Also, let me know what you think of the comic!  Feedback is ALWAYS welcome! 

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Cause It's Cap...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 28, 2014 at 6:00am

...and, it's Friday! One more week to geek on "Winter Soldier." I'd buy on Fandango: after the east coast nuclear winter, people will be stir crazy from telecommuting and need to get out...and see real people again.

 The analysis below is the reason why you shouldn't take a physics person to the movies with you...just kidding, and my wife sadly has no choice in the matter. We'll behave, promise. Just don't ask questions like these.





At the end, Cap throws his shield at the Winter Soldier – because that’s what Captain America does. But wait! The Winter Soldier just catches the shield and throws it right back at Captain America. The real cool part is what happens when Cap catches the shield. The impact is strong enough to push him back a little bit. Is this enough to get an estimate for the mass of the shield? I think so.



Sliding Back

This is really a multi-part problem. First, the shield is thrown by the Winter Soldier. I don’t really care about the throwing motion. Next, the shield moves through the air to Captain America and collides with him. This gives him some recoil velocity. However, Cap is standing on the ground such that his recoiling body is slowed down to a stop by friction.



It might not seem to be the best place to start, but I am going to start backwards. Let’s look at Captain America sliding after the impact with the shield. By estimating the frictional force and the sliding distance, I can get a value for the recoil speed after the impact.



In this first problem, I can just consider Captain America as a block with some initial speed moving across the ground. Here is a force diagram while he is slowing down (after the impact).


The forces in the vertical direction must add up to zero since Cap doesn’t accelerate up or down. This means that I can find the force the ground pushes up on him:


Why do I need this force pushing up (usually called the Normal force)? If I use the typical model for sliding friction, the magnitude of the frictional force can be determined by:


 Wired: How Much Does Captain America’s Shield Weigh? Rhett Allain

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Nuclear Quantum Computers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 25, 2014 at 5:30am
Photon-shaping technique could lead to "nuclear" quantum computers. (Courtesy: iStockphoto/polygraphus)

A way of modulating the waveforms of individual, coherent high-energy photons at room temperature has been demonstrated by researchers in the US and Russia. The advance opens the way for new quantum-optics technologies capable of extremely high-precision measurements, as well as the possibility of <>quantum-information systems based on nuclear processes. The new approach could also be useful for those doing fundamental research in a variety of areas, ranging from the role of quantum phenomena in biological processes to fundamental questions in quantum optics itself.



The technique was developed by Olga Kocharovskaya, Farit Vagizov and colleagues at Texas A&M University and the Kazan Federal University. Their set-up bears some similarity to a Mössbauer spectroscopy experiment. A sample of radioactive cobalt-57 decays to an excited state of iron-57, which then decays by emitting a 14.4 keV "soft" gamma-ray photon. This photon can then be absorbed and re-emitted by a nearby stainless-steel foil containing iron-57. Because of the Mössbauer effect, no energy is lost in the recoil of the stainless-steel lattice and the photon is emitted at 14.4 keV with very little spectral blurring.



As the foil absorbs and re-emits the photons, it is vibrated at megahertz frequencies. By making clever use of the Doppler effect, the team is able to shape a single photon into a double pulse and even a train of ultrashort pulses. This makes it possible to use the gamma-ray photons to encode quantum information in a "time-bin qubit" – quantum bits in which information is encoded in terms of the relative arrival time of pulses.



 Physics World:
Gamma-ray shaping could lead to 'nuclear' quantum computers

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Nano Fingerprints...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 26, 2014 at 5:00am
The process of producing anti-counterfeit nano-fingerprints based on randomly distributed silver nanowires.
[1] Silver nanowires (AgNWs) are prepared by the self-seeding method and an amorphous silica shell is coated on the surface using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS).
[2] Fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and rhodamine B-isothiocyanate (RITC) are attached covalently to the surface of the pre-formed silica shell by allowing the formation of covalent bonds between the silica surface and 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (APTMS).
[3] A photolithographic process is used to inscribe the direction and target markers on the surface of the PET film. The orientation marker (“KAIST”) can be used to determine the correct direction of the PET film. The target marker (“X”) has an empty space in its central region where AgNWs are loaded to generate fingerprints.

Counterfeiting is a steady and increasingly important problem that occurs in nearly every trade and industry. Recognizing the difficulty in distinguishing counterfeit goods from genuine products, new nanoscale technologies are being developed to prevent and identify this illegal practice. Using dye-coated one-dimensional (1D) nanowires, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea have demonstrated that randomly distributed nanowires can generate unique and simple barcode patterns readily applicable by many to anti-counterfeiting.



Reporting in Nanotechnology, nanoscale fingerprint patterns are generated by simply casting fluorescent dye-coated silver nanowires onto a transferrable flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film. The direction and target markers ("KAIST" and "X") are patterned by a photolithographic technique to provide positional information for identification and the nanowires are cast onto it. Then, using an optical microscope, the resulting unique fingerprint patterns can be visually authenticated in a simple and straightforward manner, as shown fully in the figure above.


 Nano Tech Web: Combatting counterfeit goods with nanoscale fingerprints
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RGDX...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 24, 2014 at 6:39am

A little something to do while vegging on the couch (nothing on the "boob tube" except COSMOS, really).



Controlling a lab from home



The Remote Control Glow Discharge (RGDX) is a plasma that you can control from the comfort of your browser. YOU have control of the entire experiment including the gas pressure inside the tube, the voltage produced by the power supply that makes the plasma, and the strength of an electromagnet surrounding the plasma. You can perform experiments from any computer anywhere in the world!




In 2002, we began developing plasma sources for educational purposes and one of our devices won 2nd place in the National Apparatus Competition sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 2003, we began controlling our plasma sources by computer for a plasma exhibit in a science museum. The progression of this has led to remote control of a plasma from any location by anyone with an internet connection. This type of control could serve as an experimental component of an online physics class or for a school that typically does not have plasma physics equipment.



As with all other Science Education Department labs, the RGDX has been developed in large part by high school and undergraduate interns.



The Remote Glow Discharge Experiment was officially released to the public on 3/12/2014. The story can be found here.



 PPPL: Remote Glow Discharge Experiment (RGDX)

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The Moon's North Pole...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2014 at 12:02pm


On 18 June 2009, NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to map the surface of the Moon and collect measurements of potential future landing sites as well as key science targets. After two and a half years in a near-circular polar orbit, LRO entered an elliptical polar orbit on 11 December 2011 with a periapsis (point where the LRO is closest to the surface) near the south pole, and the apoapsis (point where LRO is furthest from the surface) near the north pole. The increased altitude over the northern hemisphere enables the two Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs) and Wide Angle Camera (WAC) to capture more terrain in each image acquired in the northern hemisphere. As a result, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) archive now contains complete coverage from 60°N to the north pole (except of course for areas of permanent shadow) with a pixel scale of 2 meters.



The LROC team assembled 10,581 NAC images, collected over 4 years, into a spectacular northern polar mosaic. The LROC Northern Polar Mosaic (LNPM) is likely one of the world’s largest image mosaics in existence, or at least publicly available on the web, with over 680 gigapixels of valid image data covering a region of the Moon (2.54 million km², 0.98 million miles²) slightly larger than the combined area of Alaska (1.72 million km²) and Texas (0.70 million km²) -- at a resolution of 2 meters per pixel! To create the mosaic, each LROC NAC image was map projected on a 30 m/pixel Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) derived Digital Terrain Model (DTM) using a software package called Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS). A polar stereographic projection was used in order to limit mapping distortions when creating the 2-D map. In addition, the LROC team used improved ephemeris provide by the LOLA and GRAIL teams and an improved camera pointing model to enable accurate projection of each image in the mosaic to within 20 meters.



 NASA: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital Camera

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Children's Home...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2014 at 5:51am


Established in 1847, the Children's Home provides a range of services and programs giving hope and healing to abused and neglected children in the Hudson River Region. The Children's Home served 397 children and their family members last year. The Home provides a full range of residential services including campus-based care, community-based group homes and boarding homes, and independent living apartments. It also provides regular foster care and intensive therapeutic foster homes.



Throughout our 167 year history, the underlying mission of the Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie has remained the same: The Home is dedicated to providing a safe and nurturing environment that improves lives and empowers at-risk children and families in the Hudson Valley and surrounding communities.



I did this presentation on Saturday, 22 March at the behest of the local Alpha Kappa Alpha alumni chapter. I have done such presentations before. I was more than happy to do it.



It was a focused audience of five young men and three young women. They participated well, and at least a few of them said they were going to purchase electronics snap kits from "The Shack." I came away encouraged and inspired by the curiosity of these young people in spite of their challenging circumstances. Especially in an era of error and pseudoscience propagated as alternate "truth" more outreach like this is needed: these are the "meek who will inherit the earth" and will need the tools to manage it.



Physics teachers: all the links in the embed are active, including those in the pictures of slides 8 and 12. If you want the Power Point version with all the "bells and whistles" of this embed, email: physics4thecool@gmail.com. Please attribute the source. My reference to Korea on slide 4 was a quote from "The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way," by Amanda Ripley and not meant to be derisive: the Korean children spend 16 hours a day in school M-F and 8 hours on Saturday. They are brilliant via focus and immersion.

 I used parts from Electronics 101 and Electronics 303 kits purchased from Radio Shack. Apparently, Radio Shack only carries the Electronics 101 snap kit. I'd try their service number for the more advanced Electronics 303. However, Amazon carries comparable manipulatives: SC-100,  SC-300 and SC-750. Good luck.
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